Earlier this month, MSI opened fire on Gigabyte over the company’s support of PCI Express 3.0. MSI made its claim through a slide deck press release, where it boasted that its motherboards featured true PCIe 3.0 support and that Gigabyte’s boards did not.

Tom’s Hardware contacted Gigabyte for its side of the story and now, having talked to both companies in depth about the issue, and now seemed to have found the truth to the stories from both side, somewhat.

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Check out this tasty morsel of PS Vita info making the rounds: you’ll be able to face your PSP-totin’ friends via ad-hoc mode with games you’ve snagged from the PS Store (so long as the title supports it). Sure, it doesn’t kill the sting of its three to five hour battery life, but hey, we’ll just consider it another justification for picking up the hot little number once it hits shelves, and oh yeah, let’s not forget that the PS Vita is region free!

SOURCE via Playstation.com

Every time we reboot our computers, that scrolling code takes us right back to the days of War Games and Tab. Bringing us into the 21st century, Microsoft has decided to ditch the old boot by beautifying the whole experience with a graphical menu.

Windows 8 will replace the standard fugly BIOS system with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) — giving users a high resolution logo and a graphical menu to gaze upon while powering up their PC. Besides just looking better, the menu lets you boot to a different disc, OS or USB drive using pretty pictures and words as prompts.

If you’re into a little self-inflicted eye torture, you can always pull up the command prompt menu from nightmares past.

SOURCE via MSDN

On Tuesday, August 23, a lone 2012 Infiniti M35h ripped down the UK’s rain-drenched Santa Pod Raceway and sped into the record books as the world’s quickest hybrid vehicle.

Driven by Tim Pollard, associate editor of the UK’s Car Magazine, and overseen by Guinness World Records, the 360-horsepower M35h dashed down the quarter-mile track in 13.9031 seconds (average of all runs). The quickest run of the day tripped the clock at 13.8960 seconds. In describing the M35h’s record-setting run, Pollard stated, “At Santa Pod you could feel the instant torque of the electric motor away from standstill – the car just leapt off the line.”

Lest you think it’s only quick for a hybrid, Infiniti points out that, in the hierarchy of quick vehicles, the M35h’s time puts it on a par with the following performance icons:

• 1982 Lamborghini Countach S: 13.9 secs
• 1998 BMW M3: 13.8 secs
• 2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante: 13.6 secs
• 2007 Porsche 911 Carrera: 13.6 secs
• 1966 Shelby Cobra: 13.5 secs
• 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO: 13.5 secs

The M35h scoots from 0 to 62 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds and tops out at 155 mph. On the consumption side, the M35h snagged an official EPA rating of 27/32 mpg city/highway, with a combined rating of 29 mpg. Currently, the M35h is North America’s only 350-plus horsepower, 30-plus mpg highway vehicle.

A developer recently suggested in an open discussion group that Mozilla could drop the release cycle of Firefox from six to five weeks. This was greeted with a response from Mozilla Firefox project manager Christian Legnitto confirming that Mozilla “will absolutely shorten” the cycle, but not “soon”. The discussion of this topic is somewhat surprising as Mozilla is still dealing with problems in its current release cycle and has not really solved the issue of longer enterprise release cycles. This new discussion may not be the best way to calm enterprise users.

As with so many Firefox product ideas, this pitch created its own dynamic in which other Mozilla developers suggested that a release cycle of six weeks is two short and additional time for each release may be necessary. Later in the discussion, Legnitto wrote that Mozilla is sticking with the six-week-release cycle “for the foreseeable future.” Of course, there was no definite statement and since Mozilla considers its public discussion groups an environment in which anyone can say anything, no matter of rank and content, there is no way to now say for certain whether the release process will change or not. The official Mozilla version is that six weeks is the status quo, but we know that there are discussions in the background and the release process may change as a result at some point.

Mozilla’s communication practices have become somewhat difficult to understand as statements from Mozilla officials in these developer groups often change direction depending on the public reaction to them. What’s more, officials often say their statements are just personal opinions that should not be taken as fact. As a result, reports on developer discussions can be misleading, Mozilla says. However, in this case, the takeaway is that there is a discussion about the release cycle time frame and the current model is apparently not set in stone, which may be worrisome for enterprises that are using Firefox and are struggling with the current six-week release cycle.

PC vendors and manufacturers are reportedly expressing their concerns about Intel’s ultrabook concept and the supposed sub-$1000 price range. The problem, it seems, is that Intel is asking too much for its processors, forcing them to either choose “underpowered” chips or reduce the component specifications to meet the price goal.

According to several reports from DigiTimes, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin and Compal Electronics president Ray Chen are both asking Intel to provide a subsidy over its CPU prices. If the vendors are forced to choose slower processors or change the system specs, the resulting ultrabook performance will be significantly reduced. Vendors may not be willing to push these sub-par devices thus missing Intel’s 40-percent market prediction.

As it stands now, the biggest cost for ultrabook manufacturers is the CPU and the operating system. Next in line are the ultra-thin components like the LCD screen and the solid state drive (SSD). Sources claim that brand vendors are cutting their quotes to notebook ODMs by more than 50-percent to maintain their own profitability because they are unable to reduce component cost.

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Epic Games president Mike Capps said that the studio currently isn’t working on anything new in the Unreal universe, shooting down rumors that one of the five new titles currently in development may be the third installment to the original Unreal series.

“Unreal and Unreal Tournament continue to have a huge influence on the studio here, even though we’re not currently working on an Unreal IP project,” he admitted to Forbes. “Epic’s core game making philosophy of ‘when everyone says it’s done, keep polishing!’ came from our experiences with Unreal Tournament. That’s the beginning of our quality-focused studio DNA.”

The interview goes on to talk about various things including the continuation of Gears of War now that the third installment is out the door. The series isn’t finished on a business level, with novels, comic books, toys and whatnot still in the pipeline. He also talked a little about entering the mobile market and how Unreal Engine 3 has played a role in Epic’s overall success.

“Our engine team and our game team work together so well,” he said. “One of my proudest moments was at the Game Developers Conference awards, where I was able to accept the ‘Best Visuals’ award and thank the engine technology team for making the art possible… and then accept the ‘Best Technology’ award and thank the art team for making the tech look so good. I don’t see how a game like Gears or Infinity Blade could be so successful without that partnership.”

“When we started working on Unreal Engine 3, we certainly never envisioned it running on a mobile device,” he added. “Now that’s a major part of our technology business and our games business.”